Or it shows that he does have the authority to cancel student debt and no longer would have the excuse of “sorry I can’t, out of my hands”.
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True and I mentioned it in the second part of my conclusion. There’s a chance that this excuse would be needed to be kept up because it’d be politically damaging to hold up that promise. That’d be pretty cynical but not out of line for our politicians.
Regardless of whether he does not have the power to do it or he has the power to do it but won’t exercise it for political fallout reasons, the chances of this happening soon seem rather small at this point.
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I’d guess he’s banking on bankruptcy judges to solve this for him, by discharging student loan debts much more liberally than has been the standard. Half get what they want, and the other half gets to blame someone other than Biden.
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That could be the case but that leaves the question of why he’d NOT want to appear to be the one helping solve the issue and get credit for it. If it were a political slam dunk, why wouldn’t you, as a politician, not want to be more proactive, especially when it was a campaign promise. I know voters don’t hold politicians to their campaign promises any more but still.
Because to some it’s a slam dunk, and to others it’s the last straw.
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That’s what I’d assume too. They must have made the calculation that this new handout would piss off more people than they’d buy the votes from.
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More media lobbying for debt discharge
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/17/politics/biden-student-loan-bankruptcy/index.html
While it’s rare that a judge agrees to discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy, it happened twice so far this year… the Department of Education appealed both of those rulings, as first reported by the Daily Poster, an investigative journalism website, and then withdrew its opposition within days.
“ED does not support an appeal and understands that the notice of appeal was filed by DOJ as a procedural matter. We have asked that the notice be withdrawn,” wrote Department of Education Under Secretary James Kvaal on Twitter last week in reference to Wheat’s case.
ED and the Justice Department are working to ensure that the government does not appeal bankruptcy cases where the borrower has proven an undue hardship," the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
Sounds like students are encouraged to play “judicial roulette” and hope their BK case is assigned to some progressive. Then the Feds won’t stand up for the taxpayer behind that defaulted loan, but give it away to the student by not contesting the judge.
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To be fair, I wonder if it’d be worth it either. How much money would the DoE and DoJ recover should they be successful in appeals compared to the amounts being discharged?
The thing that always bugs me is that nowhere in these type of articles, does anyone mention how the heck did the government end up on the hook for $100k loans? Our government should NOT be in the business of doing student loans. Or at least not of that size. Up to $5k per year, fine. For the rest, leave it to the private sector. Maybe that’ll force people to make more of a value decision on college attendance. And if they don’t, better have private lenders be on the hook for the discharged loans than the taxpayer. Then, maybe colleges won’t feel entitled to charging $60k/yr tuition either if suddenly nobody can afford these nonsense prices.
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Here we go again I wish they’d make their minds up already so I can switch over to Direct Loans( and “pay” higher interest).
They’re stuck, and cannot figure out how to cancel student loan debt without also cancelling it for a large swath of borrowers they do not think deserve it. Along with so many people more focused on positioning themselves to ‘unfairly’ take advantage of any action, than on repaying the debt they otherwise can afford. It’s be so much easier if they could simply cancel the debt for black students, but alas, even they are not that dilusional to be that blunt about (at least not yet). Another case of marginally-successful white males mucking up their agenda. Curse them!
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What’s the point of another extension? Pandemic is winding down. Students who graduate this spring should get near ideal job market considering the gap between openings and people able to fill them. We’re by nearly all measures back to pre-pandemic levels of employment.
Meanwhile, the pause has also not shown any signs of buying the administration time to decide a viable path to implementing anything. Lots of talk about the legal ability to unilaterally cancel debt by executive order but no movement and no indication that a decision is getting closer, most likely because actually canceling that debt would remove an incentive for people affected to keep voting for them.
So what’s the excuse this time for keeping the pause? Seems to me like the pause is a euphemism for “We know we promised this but we cannot actually cancel that debt, so instead we’ll pause it forever (under any excuse you’ll swallow) as long as you keep us in power.” #vote4us4morefreebies
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Such mixed messages…
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I’m wondering if the perpetual “pauses” are to put pressure on lenders/servicers to cave, and agree to eat a portion of the cost?
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You got it! I’m not convinced that most of the people are for any more free handouts.
Of coarse those young folks who owe college debts remember Biden promised $10k 
payment. (or their parents).
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Good question. I was going to say they might be prompted to lower rates. However, you can already find rates at half the going rate 5-10 years ago if you refinance.
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It’s possible. My thinking is that they’re simply calculating that there’ll never be a good time politically for anyone to restart these payments so the “pause” will be extended year after year. It’s a win-win. They cannot legally cancel the debt but they’ll take credit for effectively doing it. And they’ll dare a GOP administration to resume payments 4+ years after they were stopped once everybody has gotten used to the freebie.
That said, I’m not sure the pause can put that much pressure. At some point, I expect lenders to start tightening their lending if it’s become clear that the perma-pause is never gonna end. Once they stop lending/servicing loans, you’ll have rock (resuming repayments) or hard place (having no lender underwriting student loans and way more kids not being able to attend college). 
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after all these years UHEAA is exiting FFELP Loans. I guess my 20 years of payments have helped them fund other UT students over the years? Utah’s exit from student loan servicing may mean $289M scholarship fund - Deseret News
I guess the crappy CSRs or Biden’s policies are to blame.
I wonder if I’ll lose my autopay 1% discount will transfer. If not I’ll jump ship to Direct Loans (which UHEAA CSRs said I couldn’t but I have since confirmed that I can)
I wish these same legal experts also provided insight on the consequences of executive action to cancel debt (or decide not to enforce repayment like is proposed here).
For me one parallel was the decision from the Trump administration to no longer enforce the penalty of the mandate for health insurance from Obamacare. Since then, the number of uninsured rose from 28 millions in 2016 to 33 millions (+18%) by 2019 (by which time penalty had been reduced to $0). Now in this case, this was the desired effect of removing the penalty, not an unintended consequence.
But for student loans, what do the expert think the lender landscape is gonna look like if repayment enforcement for student loans are suddenly ignored?
Who’d still underwrite loans they know won’t get repaid (except by suckers maybe)?
And if the government itself guaranteed these student loans (basically taking the hit for defaults), who would not stop paying out of pocket for college and instead get the free money from loans they don’t have to repay?
And if people no longer care about how much college costs because someone else is left holding the bag, what will this do to what college think they can charge for college?
The list of potential unintended consequences seems beyond daunting to me but nowhere you see any of the clowns pushing for debt cancellation providing a path forward for affordable higher education. Only opinions on the feasibility of a quick vote-grabbing handout.
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*BIDEN EXPECTED TO EXTEND STUDENT LOAN PAUSE THIS WEEK: THE HILL
*BIDEN ADMIN EXPECTED TO ANNOUNCE STUDENT LOAN PAUSE TO AUG. 31
the perpetual 0% interest student loan carrot continues to be dangled in front of younger voters. “We didn’t cancel your debt like we said, be we might next term!” Meanwhile,
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